Flatter: Whitney brings rabbit season to Saratoga summer
Rabbit season has nothing to do with my 49th annual campaign to stamp out August. My yearly call to merge the calendar’s most heat-addled, holiday-bereft month into a 62-day July started with a trip to a hospital emergency room when I was 18. It is the concussion that keeps on giving.
Instead, what I consider to be the July 33 running of the Grade 1, $1 million Whitney Stakes brings rabbit season from Europe to America, complete with the debate that goes with it.
HorseCenter: Analysis, top picks for Whitney day.
We all accept that it is perfectly legal for Chad Brown to put Contrary Thinking into the field and have Dylan Davis ride him to the front like a quarter horse in a pre-sale breeze-up. The better to set an honest, early pace to benefit his deep-closing stablemate Sierra Leone. But does that make it right?
In America, it is not openly declared with formality that Contrary Thinking will be a rabbit, even if it is an open secret. There is no letter R emblazoned next to the horse’s name like the L for Lasix. Brown and other trainers would squirm at the very notion that there would be an official declaration of such tactics.
In Europe and Australia, however, it is an absolute requirement for horsemen to put such intentions in writing so the betting public is not misled into thinking that that long shot carrying massive odds actually will win the race. The words pacemaker and leader are used interchangeably in international form guides. Yes, even in France, where the phrase le lièvre was replaced some years ago with le leader. Nothing like a little Franglish in the continental PPs.
Pity the poor jockey across the pond who dares to take the rabbit back off the pace or the trainer who tries to pull the old switcheroo with the announced tactics. The ensuing command to appear before stewards is more certain overseas than the outcome of a walkover. So, too, is the hefty fine and suspension.
Before we round up the pitchforks and torches and organize a good clamor to get the same rule over here, let’s not forget what happened in England on Wednesday in the Group 1 Sussex Stakes at Goodwood.
Qirat, who was supposed to be the rabbit for Field of Gold, made like the pink bunny from those antiquated TV commercials for Energizer batteries. Still going. For the whole mile, no less. Damned if he did not win the thing. His 150-1 track odds were said to be the longest for a Group 1 winner in the modern era of Great Britain and Ireland racing. One presumes that would be something post-Victorian.
Trainer Ralph Beckett had some explaining to do to stewards, who took note that Qirat, in their words, “appeared to show improved form compared with its previous run.” That would have been a 27th-place finish in the 30-horse Royal Hunt Cup Handicap at Royal Ascot. He ran like a rabbit there before he wilted in the final furlong.
Racing Post trip notes Wednesday said, according to Beckett, “that gelding was not suited by the first-time blinkers in his previous race and raced too keenly as a result.” Translation? There is no such thing as a sure thing, even betting on who will finish last in a horse race.
This is not to suggest Contrary Thinking has a snowball’s chance in America’s summer of ’25 heat dome when he races in the Whitney. I would not even be certain he will make the quarter- and half-mile calls ahead of Mama’s Gold, who just as easily could fill the role of the hare if he had a stablemate in the race.
Rabbits may not be as frequent a phenomenon in U.S. racing as they once were, what with shrinking foal crops and a greater demand for up-front speed from the dirt horses who rounded up to fill stakes fields.
There was a time, though. Joseph Durso of The New York Times celebrated the rabbit in a 1992 story. Gallant Man had Bold Nero. Damascus had Hedevar. Buckpasser had Great Power. They were the pace softeners hailed from the ’50s and ’60s.
Durso’s story came 12 years before Eddington worked not so much as a rabbit but more like a tire-biting greyhound nipping at the heels of Smarty Jones. He took all the starch out of Smarty’s finish in a Belmont Stakes defeat that ruined what would have been the first Triple Crown in 26 years. There are plenty of players and horse fans who still curse Jerry Bailey for unleashing a different form of unwinnable strategy.
Which gets right to the heart of the matter. Having a pacemaker set up a stablemate is at once shrewdly sound strategy as it is ethically slippery. We are, after all, talking about an entry who has been assigned the task of losing the race.
Raising such an issue nowadays seems quaint. Weigh this against baseball teams surrendering their seasons by selling off their best assets at the trade deadline or basketball teams who tank games to improve their chances of getting the top draft choice.
Do all these wrongs make a right? Probably not. Honestly, though, I don’t feel like rabbits are sinister intrusions into our game. We all know why they are there, so strategize smartly and bet accordingly. Besides, we have bigger fish to fry.
Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.